My Neighbour’s Sideways Complaint – a poem by Gill McEvoy

My Neighbour’s Sideways Complaint

He peers across my wall on the pretext
of admiring a rose, but is quick to make 
snide reference to the dandelions
that busily consort with thyme and daisies.

(Why does no-one like the dandelion, I wonder:
they’re as yellow as the daffodil
and so, so easy to grow!)

I tell him I am trying to breed a blue one, 
that gardens one day might be filled with them
as woods in spring are full of bluebells.

Everyone wants a bit of Heaven, I say,  
though no-one dares to get too close to the sun.

Gill McEvoy won the 2015  Michael Marks Award for The First Telling (Happenstance Press). She is a Hawthornden Fellow. Her recent collection is Are You Listening? (Hedgehog Press 2020) and a “Selected” is forthcoming from Hedgehog Press in 2022.